Depth of field: what is it, and how do you control it?

Photographer and writer Marcus is a former editor of Digital Camera

Although a camera lens can only be focused at a single distance each time you take a picture, sharpness doesn’t start and stop at that point. Instead, it extends both behind the object in focus and in front of it, towards the camera, until things start to look blurred. It’s the extent of this ‘apparent sharpness’ that’s known as the depth of field – or the DoF.

The amount of depth of field